


all this off the grid is getting old

by goodbyechunkylemonmilk



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boggarts, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, F/F, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Slash, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-08 23:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12875367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbyechunkylemonmilk/pseuds/goodbyechunkylemonmilk
Summary: Defense Against the Dark Arts is a joke and everyone knows it. The only class that’s more of a complete waste of time is History of Magic, and that’s taught by someone who literally died of boredom just from being himself. No professor lasts, so a month of every year is invariably wasted going over concepts the students have already learned (for a generous definition of “learned”) before they’re allowed to move on to the lesson plans of someone who is going to, without fail, get pregnant or flee the country or be eaten by a rogue troll before the year is out.





	all this off the grid is getting old

**Author's Note:**

> So while this doesn't get into specific acts or anything, it does explicitly grapple with Sirius' abusive childhood and some of the consequences of it. Also _Back on the Map_ is the Sirius Black theme song imho

Defense Against the Dark Arts is a joke and everyone knows it. The only class that’s more of a complete waste of time is History of Magic, and that’s taught by someone who literally died of boredom just from being himself. No professor lasts, so a month of every year is invariably wasted going over concepts the students have already learned (for a generous definition of “learned”) before they’re allowed to move on to the lesson plans of someone who is going to, without fail, get pregnant or flee the country or be eaten by a rogue troll before the year is out.

Their fourth-year professor is particularly bad, has to refer to his poorly-researched notes every five seconds and yet has somehow mustered up an ego to rival Sirius’ own. They clash a fair bit, largely because Sirius is barely willing to concede that he’s an equal, let alone a superior. She also suspects, from the simmering nature of his resentment, that he's had more than one run-in with her parents, that they cost him a Ministry placement or dragged his name through the mud. If she and James get in trouble for the same thing, she can count on being assigned twice as many detentions for her attitude or tone or something equally arbitrary. James works herself up into a fit of righteous indignation every time, but it has always struck Sirius as something of a waste of energy. It gives her something to do while James is at Quidditch practice, anyway.

Every professor they have has tried separating her from James, which means that until they’re allowed to reclaim their original seats, they have to be more disruptive than ever to prove that they can’t be pushed around. It's worked everywhere but Transfiguration. Sirius is in the middle of wrapping a crude note around her quill, to be tossed across the room at James’ head, when Comstock slams a hand down on her desk. “Miss Black, would you like to demonstrate?”

She smirks up at him, trying not to betray how startled she is. She doesn't even know what she's meant to be demonstrating, just that she undoubtedly can, and that she doesn't want to. “Not particularly. I’m sure someone else can help you figure it out though.”

He goes into the usual spiel about how he’s her professor and she has to treat him with respect, which reliably comes in at just under a minute and a half and thus gives her time to try to remember what she did with the robes she’s been planning to wear to Hogsmeade, and whether they have an essay due in Charms this week. She starts listening again right at the end, which is when he tacks on his specific complaint of the day. He must be tired today, because it isn’t very original, just that she’s an insufferable brat whose lack of respect for authority will lead her down a bad path. It’s truly just a less striking version of every conversation she’s ever had with her parents. "If you're as brilliant as you think you are," he continues, "you should have no trouble showing your classmates how to fend off a boggart."

Her smirk freezes on her face. “Did you say it's a boggart?”

Comstock sighs, and if her heart weren't racing, Sirius would mimic it, the melodramatic heaving. “Miss Black, do you ever listen when I speak?”

Ordinarily, Sirius would say that his obsession with asking such easy questions is exactly why she spends most of class in a fugue state, but now she's stunned into silence. She doesn’t quite know what her boggart will turn into, but it certainly isn’t going to be anything good. The rest of the class will have spiders and mice and whatever else people with normal childhoods get to be afraid of, and she’s going to summon up the spectre of her mother screaming at her. She's joked about her family plenty, told stories equal parts amusing and discomfiting, but in the moment, faced with the prospect of gut-wrenching humiliation, she can't find anything to laugh about. She has some hope, some small, improbable hope, that it will be something else. She’s never been a fan of bugs, or small enclosed spaces, and if she gets  _very_ lucky, all that will be revealed to her classmates is her lifelong discomfort with grindylows. 

“I don’t think that’s—a good idea,” Sirius manages finally. Across the room, James tenses. “Maybe someone else can demonstrate?”

But she’s pushed him too hard for too long, and he just laughs. “Don’t be so humble, Miss Black. You’ll do just fine.”

“Professor, I think you should listen to her,” James chimes in.

Comstock’s face twitches in a violent grimace. “You can get to the front of the room in the next minute, or not only you, but your little friends will take a zero for the day.”

There's very obviously no way out, so she resolves to go to her end with at least a modicum of dignity. She isn't going to beg, not him. He's just a small man on a power trip, bitter because when he's faded into obscurity, she'll still have a chance at something more.

She braces herself as she waits for Comstock to open the cabinet, which he does with a bit more of a flourish than seems strictly necessary. The change is instantaneous, and even worse than she thought it would be, her mother looming in front of her, face distorted with a rage, a good head taller than she is in real life so that Sirius feels young again, small and scared. Sometimes Sirius finds herself outside of her body, as if something has snapped, come loose, and she’s somewhere just a couple centimeters above or to the left of where she ought to be. James has done some reading on it, without being asked, and says it might be some kind of defense mechanism. But if it is, it isn’t a very good one, because as her mother’s distorted form screams at her, she’s more present in her body than she’s ever been before, stuck in the acrid taste of fear, the violent tremble that starts in her right hand and spreads. Her knees go weak, and she’s barely conscious of her classmates watching as her mother goes on, saying she’s disgusting and spoiled and ungrateful, that she can’t escape her blood, her family, that she’ll come crawling back when her blood-traitor friends get sick of her. She can practically feel Walburga’s spittle raining down on her face, and she doesn’t know how she ever thought she could escape this.

She feels a gentle nudge in her side and flinches away, too dramatically, like a kicked dog, and then her mother is transforming into a centaur, hooves poised to stampede, and then shifting again, so that the top half is a horse with flared, startled nostrils, balanced precariously on a set of human legs clad only in a pair of polka dot knickers. James materializes out of nowhere, one hand on Sirius’ shoulder, the other clutching her wand, which she flicks a second time to banish the boggart, and then, finally, Sirius can breathe again.

“Are you all right?” James whispers.

Sirius makes a point of standing up straight, resisting the temptation to sag into James' warmth, as if there is still the possibility of some small dignity. She tries to laugh, but it isn’t any easier now, her worst secret exposed. 

“Right,” James says, her hand on Sirius’ elbow, steering her toward the door. “We’re going.”

“I haven’t dismissed either of you! Take your seats immediately.” Comstock must see that he’s lost control, made himself the villain, because he doesn't step into their path. For what little that’s worth.

James doesn’t bother to respond, and Sirius certainly doesn’t have it in her, so they leave together, ignoring the rumbling behind them. James keeps up a constant stream of invectives as she drags Sirius to Merlin knows where. “What was he thinking? He had no right to treat you that way. We’re not taking this lying down, you know. My father is going to have his  _job_.” She speeds up as they walk, pushing herself until her words are coming in short bursts between breaths.

Ordinarily, Sirius would recognize the path they’re taking, but she can’t get herself to focus, so she’s surprised when James taps her wand against the hump of the one-eyed witch and then fairly shoves her through the passageway. She goes along with it obligingly, pleasantly, and sits where she lands. James conjures up a jar, and a multicolored flame to go inside of it, and places it between them, the light from the flames reflecting off of her glasses.

“Are you all right?” Sirius doesn’t say anything, terrified of what will come out if she opens her mouth. James squeezes her hand. “I’m sorry that I didn’t do something sooner. I should have stopped it. I should have—have set the room on fire if I had to.” She shifts so that she and Sirius are side by side. James is always warm, so that in the summer, Sirius has to choose between being close to her and being able to breathe. She chooses James’ arm, heavy on her shoulders, every time. Now, in the slightly damp tunnel, all of her energy going toward keeping herself from vomiting, she’s absolutely mad for it. James starts to rub her back in slight, slightly lopsided circles, which is more irritating than comforting. “I’m going to get him fired,” she says again, and suddenly Sirius is sick of it all, that she let it happen, that it could happen in the first place, that it could never have happened to James.

“That doesn’t  _fix_  anything!” she snaps.

James turns red, bites her lower lip. “Well, it fixes  _some_ thing.”

“But that’s not—It isn’t—” She drops her head into her hands, tangling her fingers in her hair. “It  _happened,_  all right? Everyone knows. Everyone knows I’m this pathetic—”

“No one thinks that, I promise you. I know it’s embarrassing, but it isn’t a reflection on you. I know it feels bad now, but it really is going to be all right.”

“How do you know?” Sirius asks, quietly, numbly.

“What do you mean?”

“How do you  _know_ what this feels like? How do you know it’s going to be all right? It’s not like anything like this has ever happened to you. It’s not like it ever will. So what, exactly, do you know about this situation, James?” She ordinarily reserves her worst fits for people other than James, terrified of crossing some invisible line and wrecking the only truly good thing in her life, but now, denied the refuge Hogwarts has always been, her family’s dysfunction played out for all to see, she can’t find it in herself to care about James’ feelings, which suddenly seem so petty, so small. James’ version of familial strife is convincing her parents to buy her a new broom for her birthday when she just got one for Christmas. Her biggest doubt is whether Evans is going to give in and take her to Hogsmeade one of these days, and her ego’s so unwieldy that it can barely even be qualified as such. So she can just keep her mouth shut and cope with a disruption in the ordinarily unrelenting stream of positivity that the universe has decided she deserves.

“You’re right,” James says, subdued. “I have no idea what you’re going through, and I shouldn’t pretend I do. It’s just that I care about you so much, and it hurts that I can’t help you. But it isn’t about me, you’re right. So. What do you want me to do?”

Sirius takes a moment to think. “I don’t know. I don’t want to go to the rest of my classes.”

“Done. Do you want me to not go with you, or do you want to be alone?”

“Yes,” she says, before realizing that it isn’t helpful. She ought, at this point, to be inured to the humiliation of vulnerability, but she blushes anyway. “I mean, yes, stay.” James always seems to have a perfect understanding of her own feelings, seems to know automatically whether she’s sad or angry or tired, and what ought to be done to remedy the situation. It’s a quality Sirius has tried to cultivate in herself with little success. She tries again now, because of Jams’ earnest gaze fixed on her.

What she feels is hollow, like something essential has been scooped out, its spot left empty. She doubts that James has ever felt empty, so she can’t ask for advice like she might with angry or sad, though she suspects that she and James don’t experience even those easily named emotions the same way.

“I don’t know what I want,” she says. She’s been called self-centered more than a few times, but she doesn’t come from a family that prioritizes wants and desires, and even now, after years of James’ well-adjusted influence, there’s something deeply unnatural about trying to identify her own needs.

“That’s all right.” James slings an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in for an awkward sideways hug. “I’ll be right here when you figure it out, and until then, we can just sit here, together.” Sirius leans into James and settles there.

They miss lunch, and dinner, and James misses Quidditch practice, which she doesn’t ordinarily do even when she’s sick.  But she doesn’t complain, about the team or her empty stomach or the way her arm must be cramping. She just stays there, on the cold stone floor, Sirius’ elbow digging into her gut, and keeps up a constant stream of meaningless patter.

They’re entering hour six, and somehow James isn’t losing steam, describing some grand injustice that discouraged her from going to another meeting of the gobstones club and how sad that is for them. Something snaps inside of Sirius then, or begins to mend, and she finally starts to cry, not because of the boggart, or her parents, but because of James, because she has someone willing to sit with her for hours and expect nothing in return. She cries because, for the first time in her life, she feels lucky, like she has something she wouldn’t trade for anything.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I named the professor after Angela Martin's cat because it was on a list of British surnames and that's the kind of thing that's funny to me.


End file.
